Q Toon: When They Go Low

Some weeks, there seems to be a dearth of topics for LGBTQ+ cartoons.

This was not one of those weeks.

Some anonymous caller to Michigan Child Protective Services made a false complaint against Pete Buttigieg. An openly gay candidate for Nancy Pelosi's congressional seat was forcibly shooed away from a transgender pride event in San Francisco by pro-Palestinian activists making wildly unfair accusations against him because he's Jewish. Also in San Francisco, four pitchers on the local baseball team thought the Giants' LGBTQ Pride Game would be a good idea to tell LGBTQ fans just what they thought of them. And it would have been a good time to draw anything about the U.S. semiquincentennial.

I went with the first story, in part because Michigan's Between the Lines is one of my client papers, but also because the story is truly outrageous.

Buttigieg described in his Substack the attack on his family, likening it to "SWATting":

Now imagine the same concept, but with Child Protective Services instead of a SWAT team. Hadn’t thought of that? Me neither, until a few days ago when a police officer and a CPS worker showed up at our home and politely asked to speak with me.

I showed them in, invited them on the deck so that we could hear each other over the barking dog, and asked what was going on. They explained that there had been an allegation against me, that it concerned our four-year-old twins, and that a forensic interview had been arranged for the children the following day. I could not be present at the children’s interview, nor could any family member sit in. Afterwards, they would come back and interview me. And only then would they tell me anything about the nature of the allegation.

I was bewildered and troubled, but tried to stay calm. I’m used to any number of falsehoods, attacks, and serious problems being thrown my way. What I didn’t understand was what could have led to this kind of visit. Then, the CPS worker told me something that made my stomach turn: I was not to be alone around the children, at least until the interview took place the next day. They asked if I had relatives nearby or could perhaps stay at a hotel for the night. [...]

An anonymous caller had contacted CPS. The caller said that he had spoken to a woman who claimed to have met me at a conference several years ago in Alabama, where she said I told her that I had committed unspeakable violent crimes, and the caller believed my children were still at risk.

That was all. The officer had a couple of obvious questions. He asked if I had been to the town where the woman claimed she had met me. I have not. Then the officer made clear that he believed this was politically motivated, and said it would not be referred to a prosecutor. Nothing in the forensic interview with the children, which was conducted by trained personnel, had led to concerns.

Buttigieg holds open the possibility that he and his husband will pursue civil damages against the anonymous allegator. Michigan could also file criminal charges against the man for false reporting. That presumes that the person's cloak of anonymity can be drawn back in the first place. Unmasking the Mystery Woman from Alabama may well be impossible, if she exists at all.

There isn't much else that can be done about this sort of attack by false police report. Child Protective Services must take such allegations seriously, even against public figures. Sometimes the allegations turn out to be true — often when the public figure is some stridently antigay Republican preacher type.

If this kind of attack becomes more common — and make no mistake: LGBTQ parents are not the only people susceptible to this — somebody is going to have to give it a name.

But for now, Bearing False Witness will have to do.

Coping With Loss

I've made as a regular feature of these Graphical History Tours digging up cartoons that I had drawn 40, 30, 20, and 10 years earlier, give or take a week or two. That will be the theme for today, and the good news is that means there will be no cartoons about the lying sack of shite about to infest the Oval Office next January.

The bad news is that starting in 1984, elections in years ending in a four somehow seem to have all favored Republicans, and that is what each of these cartoons will be about.

in UW-P Ranger, Somers Wis., Nov. 29, 1984

That's a completely unrecognizable Newt Gingrich (R-GA) in the center of this cartoon from November of 1984. Gingrich's suburban Atlanta district had just reelected him to a fourth term in Congress, where he was founder of the "Conservative Opportunity Society." Ronald Reagan embraced the ideas of these previously obscure House members in his reelection campaign. 

It was easier to find pictures of former football star Jack Kemp (R-NY) and thus easier to come up with a good caricature. I'm not sure whether the third shoe salesman was intended to be any specific congressman.

in UWM Post, Milwaukee, Nov. 10, 1994

Ten years later, Gingrich’s hair had gone completely white, and I was having plenty of practice honing my caricature of the chief architect of Republicans’ “Contract With America.” The GOP had successfully campaigned on its promise to cut taxes now and to pass a constitutional amendment requiring balanced budgets in the future— the failure of Supply Side economics to date notwithstanding.

Q Syndicate, Nov. 2004

George Dubya Bush's reelection campaign in 2004 rested heavily on post-9/11 jingoism, but also on Republican Party promises to fight back against the homosexual menace. 

If any significant fraction of the liberals, LGBTQ+s, and feminists who have vowed to move to Canada because of an incoming Republican administration had ever carried through with it, Justin Trudeau would be cruising to another term in office with a solid parliamentary majority to back him up.

Instead, we have for the most part stayed here on our side of the line, fought for our right to marry, and left Mr. Trudeau desperately trying to salvage his rickety coalition government in a gale force blizzard.

Q Syndicate, Nov., 2014

Equal marriage rights were still tantalizingly beyond the reach for many of us in November of 2014. In Michigan, where Q Syndicate is based, adoptive parents April DeBoer and Jayne Rouse had sued as a couple for the right to adopt each other's children. The Sixth Circuit Court overturned lower court rulings that had favored DeBoer and Rouse, ruling instead that marriage was reserved for couples who might bear children unintentionally.

The ruling was a setback for same-sex couples with children in Michigan and other states covered by the Sixth Circuit (Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee).

The U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage the following year in Obergefell v. Hodges. 

For now. The Court now doesn’t think highly of marriage equality. Or Obergefell. Or stare decisis.

Toon: Circle Joke

If you spend a lot of time watching cable TV news, first of all, do yourself a favor and stop; and second of all, you will have heard a variety of pundits, academics, and people of the mistaken belief that they should run for president someday, who are weighing in on Why Kamala Harris Lost The Election.

One of the leading theories is that President Joe Biden and those closest to him handicapped her by running for reelection in spite of mounting evidence that his mental acuity had begun to decline. Many of us, myself included, had voted for him in 2020 on the presumption that at 77, he planned to serve one term to repair the damage left behind by The Corrupt Trump administration, then hand leadership of the party over to someone younger.

Instead, he decided to run for reelection, as he put it, "to finish the job."

Which is ridiculous.

The presidency is not a job you're supposed to "finish." Each president does what he or (someday) she can, and turns it over to the next person. The job is never finished until the Republic is.

Donald Berzelius Trump, I fear, may "finish the job."

Anyway, my worry back when Biden announced his 2024 candidacy was that he didn't have confidence that Vice President Kamala Harris was up to taking over the job from him. Or that a Democratic Party primary battle would leave its victor hobbled by constituencies feeling that they were denied their due, or ignored, or unwelcome. Or, in the absence of a primary battle, ditto.

As things have turned out, plenty of Democratic constituencies are complaining about being denied their due, ignored, or unwelcome anyway. The Left complains that Harris tacked to the center instead of wholeheartedly campaigning on their agenda. The Centrists complain that Harris embraced "wokism" and transgender rights and people who say "Latinx."

I saw a scholar on The Daily Show this week promoting his election post-mortem book, arguing to Jon Stewart that Democrats were doomed by their embrace of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion). He wasn't saying that Democrats should join Republicans in promoting Uniformity, Inequity, and Exclusion; just that they should call DEI something else — as if the right-wing propaganda machine wouldn't devote itself to turning the new name into a dirty word.

Now, I suppose that had Harris listened to the Palestinian rights crowd and condemned Netanyahu's genocidal war in Gaza, it might have been enough to get her over the finish line in Michigan. But it wouldn't have made the difference in any of the other "blue wall" swing states. Vowing to send undocumented alien drug dealers to Guantanamo might have gained her Arizona.

On the other hand, those moves might have helped about as much as affecting a southern drawl helped her in Georgia and North Carolina.

Q Toon: Hamtramck Flag Flap

When this blog last visited Hamtramck, Michigan, it was to rerun a tongue-in-cheek 1922 column by John T. Wallace and H.T. Plass in the Detroit Free Press, imagining that popular cartoon character Andy Gump (no relation to Forrest) had been elected mayor of the newly incorporated enclave. 

Surely Wallace and Plass would have found it equally fantastical that the citizens of Hamtramck would elect a Muslim mayor and an entirely Muslim city council, but that is exactly what they did in 2021.

Reversing policy of their previous administration, the Hamtramck council voted last Tuesday to ban displaying the LGBTQ+ rainbow flag on city property.

Muslim residents packing city hall erupted in cheers after the council’s unanimous vote, and on Hamtramck’s social media pages, the taunting has been relentless: “Fagless City”, read one post, emphasized with emojis of a bicep flexing.
In a tense monologue before the vote, Councilmember Mohammed Hassan shouted his justification at LGBTQ+ supporters: “I’m working for the people, what the majority of the people like.”

Mayor Amer Ghalib is promising to hold firm to the city's ban on flags representing religious, racial, ethnic, or sexual-oriented groups, and accuses LGBTQ+ people and allies of subjecting Hamtramck to  "extortion" for choosing to "stay neutral when it comes to flying flags of different groups." Under the new ordinance, only the U.S. flag, state of Michigan flag, city of Hamtramck flag, and P.O.W. flag are allowed.

Mayor Ghalib claims that the ordinance doesn't lessen the rights of LGBTQ+ Hamtramckians, they just don't deserve special consideration. You know, like those "special rights" we were told when we wanted equal rights to get married or serve in the military. Or the "All lives matter" slogan that means "Sure, Black Lives Matter, but don't bother me about your problems."

Now, I don't know what other flag requests might have been vexing Hamtramck City Hall, but it seems telling that the council chose to pass this ordinance right smack-dab in the middle of LGBTQ+ Pride Month ― and less than a week before Juneteenth. 

Has anyone checked whether the Hamtramck Police Department keeps a Thin Blue Line flag in the front office?

It's Not Easy Being Red

Today's Graphical History Tour takes up a couple of the threads that your humble scribe left carelessly strewn about last month.

We're now up to the month of April, 1923, where our forebears in the West discovered that reports of Vladimir Lenin's death were slightly exaggerated.

"Lenine's Obituary Score" by Cyrus Hungerford in Pittsburgh Sun, ca. April 9, 1923

Cy Hungerford notes how many times Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa was reported to have been killed over the previous couple of decades. 

By April of 1923, Villa was living in comfortable retirement in a 25,000-acre government-donated hacienda near Hidalgo del Parral. (His retirement was soon and abruptly to come to an end, but that's another story for another day.)

"Whatski Are You Gonna do About Itsski" by Wm. K. Patrick in Fort Worth Star Telegram,
April 6, 1923

I'm still not quite ready to declare what exactly were the rumblings of Bolshevism Carey Orr was detecting in Wisconsin a couple weeks ago. Certainly, one would have thought the trial in Michigan of communist William Z. Foster for violating the state's syndicalism law ought to have been the rumbling to catch Orr's attention.

Orr, however, had ceded the Chicago Tribune front page editorial cartoon space back to veteran John McCutcheon when the latter returned from vacation at the beginning of April, so Orr didn't get a chance to clarify which of Illinois's northern neighbors was more in danger of communist vipers bursting through the soil.

William Foster's trial, in which Michigan Assistant Attorney General O.L. Smith produced a Communist Party manifesto proclaiming that "The real Communist avails himself of every weapon to strike a blow at Capitalism, but with the firm conviction that the final onslaught will be made, not with ballots but with bullets."

Foster's defense attorney, Frank P. Walsh, argued that the manifesto had been brought forth and approved thanks to a U.S. Secret Service agent who had infiltrated the Communist Party. The trial ended in a hung jury.

"Et Tu, Brute" by Wm. C. Morris for George Matthew Adams Service, ca. April 9, 1923

The American Communist Party cultivated ties with the American labor movement, but was pointedly repudiated by the American Federation of Labor. The AFL, headed by Samuel Gompers, was at this point urging President Harding to reject a proposed "open shop" plank in the Republican Party's 1924 campaign platform, and any hint of communism within its ranks would certainly hurt the AFL's cause.

"Outraged Humanity" by Elmer Bushnell for Central Press Assn., ca. April 10, 1923

Also making news from Russia were its show trials of clergy and religious leaders, accused of hoarding wealth in violation of state mandates to turn over all church property.

I apologize that Bushnell's cartoon here is difficult to read; I'll keep trying to find a better reprint to scan. In the meantime: the toga-clad woman is labeled "Civilization"; I really can't tell what the creature labeled "Bolshevism" is supposed to be. I presume that the "Program of Religious Persecution" object is a torch, since the "Christianity" cross is on fire.

"Futility" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. April 21, 1923

Here's Dorman Smith's optimistic take on Russian religious persecution. He would eventually be proven right, I suppose, if not in his own lifetime.

Andrew Gump Elected Mayor of Congress

Return we now to the pivotal election year of 1922...

Detroit Free Press, Nov. 8, 1922

...in which a cartoon character was elected mayor of Hamtramck, Michigan.

Or not.

Either the Detroit Free Press headline writer didn't skim any further than the first paragraph of the article beneath it, or was a victim of autocorrect nearly a century before it was invented.

Or maybe John Wallace and H.C. Plass missed out on reporting the real news out of Hamtramck in favor of their own attempt to match wits with Chicago Tribune cartoonist Sidney Smith.

I haven't found any serious reporting that Andy Gump beat the flesh-and-blood candidates to be elected mayor of newly incorporated Hamtramck in 1922, although he did receive at least one vote in the race for Senator from Michigan that year, and no doubt a smattering of votes in various other contests around the country.

The Gumps by Sidney Smith, in Chicago Tribune, Sept. 5, 1922

For months, the titular character of Sidney Smith's syndicated comic strip had been waging a congressional campaign in the cartoon. Here's how the Detroit Free Press reported the results on Election Day: 

"Andy Is 100 Proof," Shout Supporters, "And He Don't Wear a Collar"

A citizen of Hamtramck who appeared at Gump headquarters during the evening proved himself slightly mixed on the issues of the campaign. This gentleman evidently had in mind Mr. Gump's declaration that he was 100 per cent for the people and wore no man's collar. "I voted for Gump," announced the Hamtramck citizen, "because he is 100 proof and don't wear no collar." Mr. Gump invited the caller into the rear room. He emerged, cheering loudly for Gump.

BY JOHN T. WALLACE & H. C. PLASS.

At 1 o'clock this morning the returns so far received in the great Gump congressional race gave:

• Andrew Gump, Independent, 30,906
• Republican candidate, 30,904
• Democratic candidate, 30,901

Feverish activity was evident at Gump headquarters. Mr. Gump's campaign manager remarked it would be advisable to make a round of the downtown precincts to see how the count was going.

"But I will need a little change for taxicab fare and other expenses," said the manager.

Immediately thereafter Mr. Gump was seen writing out a check.

"It's all in," stated John A. Schaufer.

"What do you mean, the bankroll?" inquired Roy Latham.

Schaufer dignifiedly explained that he meant Gump was a winner because he had carried the seventeenth ward.

The Gumps by Sidney Smith in Chicago Tribune, Oct. 18, 1922

Newspapers which have opposed the candidacy of Mr. Gump, reviling him from the outset of his campaign, stated in their early editions that if he won, his victory would be due to the lavish expenditure of the money he received by compromising the famous breach of promise suit the Widow Zander brought against his Uncle Bim.

"Gump," declared one of these anti-Gump sheets, "has tried to corrupt the electorate."

"Let 'em rave," said Mr. Gump when he was interviewed at his headquarters at the Hotel Dresdemona. "I am 100 per cent for the people. The final returns will show me the winner. I have vanquished the special interests. I wear no man's collar."

"Your collar is wilted," spoke up the Widow Zander, who had been in the campaign headquarters since early in the evening. "Let me run out and get you a fresh one."

"Oh, Min."

"You needn't bother," said Mrs. Gump, coming forward. "I have one in my bag for the congressman."

"Oh, Min," exclaimed Andy Gump.

The Widow Zander melted into the throng.

Just then, a courier brought in the returns from the second precinct, first ward, of Hamtramck. They gave Gump 217; the Republican candidate, 13; the Democratic candidate, 21.

"Mayor [Peter C.] Jezewski seems to be delivering the goods," was candidate Gump's only comment.

The Gumps by Sidney Smith in Chicago Tribune, Nov. 2, 1922

―

Andy Gump has just departed hurriedly from home for his headquarters, having received word from his campaign manager that the election boards in some of the river precincts are counting him out. He showed great excitement, but refused to talk to reporters.

―

After reaching his headquarters and listening to his manager's report of crooked counting in certain precincts, Mr. Gump said, "I care naught for my own political fortunes, but the sanctity of the ballot box, the palladium of American liberties, must be preserved at all hazards. I would just as sternly demand that a crook who stole a vote for me go to jail as one who stole from me."

―

Candidate Gump has just been in telephonic communication with the chief of police. He demanded that chief immediately send officers to the polling places where tampering with the count is said to be in progress. The chief listened attentively to what Mr. Gump had to say and promised to investigate the matter within the next few days.

The Gumps by Sidney Smith in Chicago Tribune, Nov. 6, 1922

―

The Widow Zander has arrived at Gump headquarters. She was cheered loudly by the crowd gathered in the street as she alighted from her car. An intoxicated individual, however, caused the widow to blush by shouting, "How's Uncle Bim?"

―

Little Chester just called up headquarters. "Is my papa elected?" he inquired. Mr. Gump went to the phone. "Go to bed now, Chester," he said. "You will never grow into a great man like your father unless you get plenty of sleep while you are young."

―

The first precinct to report gives, Andrew Gump, independent, 102; the Republican candidate, 103; the Democratic candidate, 101. Mr. Gump looked serious as he scanned these returns. Then he retired to his room, took a flat object from his hip pocket, and closed the door.

The Gumps by Sidney Smith, in Chicago Tribune, Nov. 8, 1922

―

Shortly after the polls closed, Andy Gump, Independent candidate for congress, 100 per cent for the people, cabled to Uncle Bim Gump in Australia, "The battle is over. I stand at the parting of the ways. One leads to the capitol, the other to the poorhouse."

His friends and admirers pointed out that their candidate had always been for preparedness.

―

Gump's campaign manager, after a survey of the first returns that trickled in, announced: "Indications are that Gump wins by a neck."

Those in the room glanced at the candidate's neck, and broke into wild cheering.

"A landslide for our candidate!" they shouted.

―

Early returns from the silk stocking district along the Boulevard indicated that Gump had been snowed under there. Candidate Gump's only comment was, "Oh, Min!"

The Gumps by Sidney Smith, in Chicago Tribune, Nov. 9, 1922

―

Arrival of returns from the Widow Zander's precinct caused a stir in Gump's headquarters. The caller read: "Republican, 44; Democratic, 41; Independent, 0." Gump leaped on the table.

"The double-crossing, two-faced hussy; not even her own vote!" shouted Gump. Just then the caller yelled, "Hey! A mistake in the transmission — Gump gets 100; Democratic, 41; Republican, 44."

"I always said," remarked Candidate Gump, "that Henrieta Zander was one of the finest women in the world. I knew she would deliver her precinct strong."

―

Mr. Gump has just received the following cablegram from Australia: "Hope you are winning; kindly take $100 from remains of your campaign fund and purchase some suitable gift for Mrs. Zander. Will wire bank draft to reimburse you. (Signed) Uncle Bim." Immediately after reading the cablegram, Candidate Gump was seen in deep conversation with his campaign manager. The manager was overhead [sic] to say, "That's all there is; there isn't any more."

―

"It seems to be nip and tuck," Andy Gump's campaign manager remarked to him as the returns began to filter in. "That being the case," the candidate responded, "we might as well have a little nip ourselves." They retired to a rear room and closed the door.

The Gumps by Sidney Smith, in Chicago Tribune, Nov. 10, 1922

―

Candidate Gump was greatly cheered by a telegram from Shady Rest, where Andy used to fish with Old Timer before Old Timer was married. Old Timer's wife sent the message, collect. It read, "We know you have won. You can't keep a good man down. I'll bring Old Timer to visit you in Washington."

―

A delegation of prohibition advocates arrived at Gump headquarters, and expressed the hope that Mr. Gump, if the returns finally put him in congress, would stand for the strict maintenance of the Volstead act. Mr. Gump replied, "Gentlemen, I wear no man's collar." There was thunderous applause.

―

Andrew C. Baird, Wayne County Democratic chairman, admitted shortly before midnight that Andy Gump had a good chance to defeat the Democratic candidate for Congress. "Anyway," said Mr. Baird, "Mr. Gump's Christian name is the same as mine, and I think he will lne up with our party instead of with the Republicans. We also have other tastes in common."

―

"I wear no man's collar," Mr. Gump remarked when informed of  Chairman Baird's statement. "Nevertheless I will call around to Mr. Baird's office and see what he has to offer."

―

At 11:45 p.m. Dave Gordon, deputy county treasurer, claimed the election of Andrew Gump by more than 100 plurality. The Republican and Democratic candidates were said to be preparing to apply to Judges Harry J. Dingeman and Thomas W. Cotter for orders to impound ballot boxes pending a recount.

―

Shortly after midnight, marching clubs from the Anti-Saloon league and the W. C.T. U. headed by a big Gump campaign banner swept cheering into the Hotel Desdemona and into Parlor A, where tea, ice cream, sandwiches and lady fingers were served.

Soon afterward, a marching club from the Society Opposed to Prohibition, with a Gump banner at its head, marched into Parlor H. Hall boys were kept busy carrying ginger ale, mineral water, and seltzer into Parlor H. One of the local prohibition enforcement officers stood outside the door, as a guarantee to Gump's temperance friends that no liquor would be seen taken into the room.

Q Toon: Groomer Has It

I finally got around this week to commending Michigan State Senator Mallory McMorrow (D-Royal Oak) for rising to the defense of LGBTQ+ youth last month. Then somebody leaked Samuel Alito's screed draft opinion rejecting women's reproductive rights, and I quickly churned out a cartoon in response to that, putting this one again on the back burner.

Well, here it is at long last. 

McMorrow's floor speech, recounted in her Twitter thread shortly afterward, came in response to a fundraising email from fellow State Senator Lana Theis (R-Brighton) in which Theis accused McMorrow of "grooming and sexualizing children" for the evil LGBTQ conspiracy.

It might have been a simple thing to draw Sen. Theis as the other person in my cartoon, but this "groomer" label issue is so much bigger than one obscure Republican from Brighton, Michigan. The label has been embraced and bandied about by the entire fascist wing of the Republican party and their propagandists in mass and social media.

Daily Cartoonist columnist Mike Peterson came up with the observation that "groomer" is the right-wingers' new "n―― lover." I have to agree; and it would make for a powerful cartoon if there were any way to make the point without actually using that word.

Instead, I settled on picking out a few quotations from Sen. McMorrow's speech, and creating a foil as the opposition's Picture of Dorian Gray. I regret having to leave out so much of her speech, such as her describing herself as a "straight, White, Christian, suburban mom," instilled by her mother with a belief that faith is "about recognizing our privilege and blessings and doing what we could to be of service to others, especially people who were marginalized, targeted, who had less... often unfairly."

It ain't easy coming up with a cartoon saying "Good job!" in any original way; Michigan cartoonist John Auchter settled for quoting the last sentence of her speech, adding himself in the corner offering only, "What more needs to be said?"

What more, indeed.

This Week's Sneak Peek

 I suppose my Michigan editors have been wondering when I would get around to drawing about this:

Q Toon: Go Ask Joe

As risky as it is to predict what might happen during tonight's Presidential So-Called Debate, I decided at the drawing board Sunday night that a moment like this was more likely than not. It might not be about antifa; Donald Joffrey Trump already tried the "Why Don't You Ask Joe" tack during last week's dueling Town Halls, only to have Savannah Guthrie answer "Because you're here before me."

It might not be whatabout antifa this week; it could be whatabout Hunter Biden, or whatabout something Joe Biden said about busing in 1972, or whatabout Jeffrey Toobin jerking off on Zoom. Or whatabout all three.

Shortly after I sent this cartoon off to Q Syndicate, the debate sponsors announced that each candidate would get two minutes to answer the moderator's questions with the other candidate's microphone muted. Trump's campaign people promise that they're training him to be more polite, calm, and personable this time.

I'm not afraid of any of this getting in the way of Trump's insistence upon being the only person on stage who gets to talk. Expect him to shout, swipe Biden's mic off his podium, pull out an air horn, and maybe shoot spitballs. Certainly do not expect him to stop talking when his own two minutes are up.

 Unless he storms offstage early to go sulk on Twitter.

Hält die Klappe und Geh Raus!

Sprechenback Saturday continues last week's discussion of the push in the U.S. to repress all things German during World War I. I got somewhat distracted toward the end of last Saturday's post, so I'm going to get the distraction out of the way right off the bat today with a cartoon about Prohibition.

"Not a Drum Was Heard" by Burt Thomas in Detroit News, May, 1918

Indiana approved state-wide prohibition of alcohol on April 2, 1918, followed by Michigan on April 30. While Burt Thomas's cartoon features ward heelers lamenting the loss of their occupation and restaurateurs fretting that they must now provide quality food, what I want to point out is that John Barleycorn's casket is adorned with a beer stein and pretzel. And I suppose that's a bottle of liebfraumilch.

Before the war, cartoonists tended to portray the evils of liquor using Demon Rum or Wicked Whisky. Associating booze with the hated Hun, however, would soon facilitate passage of the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. (Increasing voting rights for women and shifting revenues from alcohol excise taxes to federal income taxes were also significant, but our topic today is animus toward German-Americans.)

"No Compromise" by Archibald Chapin in St. Louis Republic, ca. May, 1918

Even in German enclaves such as St. Louis and Cincinnati, there were drives to force German language out of the public sphere. Streets, hospitals and entire cities changed their names: Germantown, Nebraska, for example, being renamed Garland, for a local soldier killed in the war. There were contests to find a more Amurikin word for sauerkraut, although the name "liberty cabbage" didn't last as long as actual sauerkraut does. A Massachusetts doctor tried to get German measles renamed "liberty measles" ... but it didn't catch on.

Detail of "Saluting 'Cincy, the Queen City of the West'" by Manuel Rosenberg in Cartoons Magazine, July, 1918

It is a shame that neither the Milwaukee Journal nor Milwaukee Sentinel employed editorial cartoonists of their own at this point in history, because I would have liked to see the sort of reaction they would have drawn to all this Germanophobia. The Journal played up Teddy Roosevelt's May 29 visit on Page 1, at which the former president called for an end to "all societies, social, political, or any other" based on European heritage. That included ethnic churches (the norm for American Lutherans, Catholics, and some smaller denominations) and, of course, newspapers.

"I wish we could provide by law so that within a reasonable space of time, a space of time that will avoid unnecessary hardship, there shall be no newspaper published in the land except in English. ... If... treasonable or semi-treasonable matter is published in a newspaper in another tongue, people do not know that the poison is being instilled at all."

"Beware the Snake" by J.E. Murphy in San Francisco Call-Post, May 13, 1918

Of course, if Milwaukee had paid any heed to Mr. Roosevelt's "campaign against the hyphen," its summers would not be anywhere near as fun.

Roosevelt's advice appealed to Sidney Greene, possibly one of the most strident Germanophobes to sling ink; his cartoon drawn after Roosevelt delivered much the same speech in New York appeared here last week.

"Marooned" by Sidney Greene in New York Evening Evening Telegram, June 2, 1918

Suspicion of foreigners from whatever country one is at war with has always been fairly commonplace, and the Great War was no exception. And certain spectacular acts of German espionage had gotten cartoonists' attention, so you can't categorize all the anti-German immigrant cartoons as entirely baseless. Yet Greene seems to have been particularly anxious for the censorship of German-language media, returning to the topic again and again.

"How Long Must We Stand for This?" by Sidney Greene in New York Evening Telegram, June, 1918

On May 16, 1918, Congress passed the Sedition Act as an amendment to the 1917 Espionage Act, criminalizing "insulting or abusing the U.S. government, the flag, the Constitution or the military" by speech or publication. (Since I discussed Teddy Roosevelt above, I should mention that he opposed passage of the Sedition Act.) Although the government used the law to go after International Workers of the World union leaders and a few German-American businessmen, it never used the law to prosecute any German-language American publication for collusion with the enemy.

"Drop It Now" by Sidney Greene in New York Evening Telegram, June, 1918

But what, you may ask (go ahead, I'll wait), about the other side of the coin?

"Time to Abolish Everything That Is Foreign" by C.F. Naughton in Duluth Evening Herald, May 25, 1918

I have not been able to locate Kaiser Wilhelm's speech about abolishing everything foreign, although I did find a satiric poem about it in the American Punch magazine. Whether the quotation is accurate or not, I have no doubt that it was reported in the American press (along with the reports of German soldiers tossing Belgian babies into ovens and infecting Red Cross blankets with pathogens), and it does seem to reflect the Kaiser's policy throughout his reign of promoting German cultural identity in his empire.

"Una Colazione Andata a Male" by Sirti in Il 420, Florence, May 12, 1918

"No other language permitted except German" proclaims the sign on the wall in this Italian cartoon. France, Italy, England and the U.S. present gold to the German at the table, whose feet rest on "International Law" and a "Directory of Mankind"; neutrals, Serbia, Montenegro and Belgium hunt for scraps in the foreground amid torn-up treaties and the skulls of Justice and Liberty.

★

Monday is Memorial Day, which did not escape cartoonists' notice in 1918, and it won't escape mine now. At roughly this time, Cartoons Magazine noted the death in action of Boston cartoonist Herbert Wolf, known for his cartoons of military camp life, and that of pilot Gordon Levy, son of cartoonist Bert Levy.

"When a Feller Needs a Friend" by Clare Briggs for Red Cross, May, 1918

American newspapers observed a week of emphasis on the Red Cross in late May, and the Committee on Public Education's Bureau of Cartoons must have promoted the image of a soldier tangled in barbed wire, because a number of cartoonists used it. "When a Feller Needs a Friend" was a regular feature of Clare Briggs's usually light-hearted, folksy cartoons for the New York Tribune.

(A bit of cartoonist-military trivia: Briggs's math professor at the University of Nebraska was John J. Pershing, later U.S. commander of the Western Front in the war. "I believe he will testify that it was easier to conquer Germany than to teach me math," Briggs said later. "One day he ordered me to the blackboard to demonstrate a theorem, and while I was giving the problem a hard but losing battle, he remarked: 'Briggs, sit down, you don't know anything.' Right then and there, I decided to become a newspaper man.")

The Chicago Tribune's John McCutcheon was inspired to draw the cartoon below upon the death of  Major Gervais Raoul Lufbery, 33, a famous French-American flying ace in the Lafayette Flying Corps with a reputation for coolness and daring. "Luff," as he was known throughout the U.S. Army and French Air Service, was a recipient of the Croix de Guerre, Legion of Honor, Ten Palms, and Médaille Militaire, plus four British medals and one from Montenegro.  He was shot down over France on May 19, 1918.

"The Fallen Ace" by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, May 21, 1918

According to newspaper reports,

"It was after six American aviators had attacked in vain yesterday that Maj. Raoul Lufbery took the air back of the American sector north of Toul against an enormous enemy biplane, a few seconds later to leap from his machine as it burst into flame and drop to the Earth.
"This type of  'flying tank,' it became known here today, is practically invulnerable to the bullets and machine guns now used by American flyers.
"So it was in a hopeless struggle that America's foremost ace lost his life, after his bullets had rattled harmlessly off the armored German machine."

Lufbery was buried with full military honors with high-ranking French and American officers in attendance. After the war, Lufbery's remains were moved to the Lafayette Escadrille Memorial near Versailles as a permanent monument to the 68 American pilots and their French officers who lost their lives during the war.

Q Toon: Patchwork Uniformity

This week's cartoon was touched off by Republicans' proposed measure in Michigan to nullify local anti-discrimination ordinances, and a similar measure which went into law in Arkansas.

LGBT activists breathed a sigh of relief when a provision that could have invalidated all 38 LGBT inclusive anti-discrimination ordinances in Michigan was removed from the final version of a bill passed 11-7 by the House Commerce and Trade Committee May 19. The Republican sponsors of the original version of the "Local Government Employer Mandate Prohibition Act" claimed they were simply trying to unify employment practices across the state.

In the final version passed out of committee, communities will not be allowed to pass ordinances regarding wages, benefits or working conditions in their towns. 

Paul Berge Q Syndicate✒May 21, 2015 EditorialCartoonists.com

I apologize, dear reader, that this cartoon works a whole lot better in a newspaper, which is easy to turn upside down, than on a desktop computer, which isn't, or a smart phone, which will keep trying to turn the image right-side up. (At last, an advantage dead trees have over live circuits!)

This cartoon is probably the result of my having recently read a mention of The Upside-Downs of Little Lady Lovekins and Old Man Muffaroo. The six-panel cartoon by Gustave Verbeck (starting in 1903) was ingeniously designed so that the second half of the story was told when you turned the page up-side down.

Verbeck's reader had to overlook the fact that Old Man Muffaroo's legs were extending up from the top of Little Lady Lovekins's hat, or that a stream the heroes had waded across in panel #3 was flowing through the sky in panel #10. But it was a weekly tour de force nevertheless: a story aimed at children but presented in a way that adults could appreciate.

At first, I was going to have a human character in the cartoon, talking out of his ass, as it were --  one of the preliminary sketches is at the top of this post. In the end (ahem), I decided that some of my editors endeavor to run respectable news publications in which exposed derrières belong in the club photos and phone sex ads in the back pages, not the editorial page. So I went with an elephant instead -- the traditional symbol of the Republican Party, whence these laws superseding local ordinances on everything from the above mentioned labor conditions to gun safety and fracking bans originate these days.

With an elephant instead of a human, the aspect of talking out of one's ass still remains, but not quite so explicitly that the League of Perpetually Offended Complainers should catch it.

Q Toon: Phil? Hey, Phil? Phil! Phil Connors?

Last year, the Supreme Court surprised everyone by declining to hear a marriage equality case. Without explanation, the court decided to ignore appeals from Republican state Attorneys General who were trying to overturn marriage equality rulings in Wisconsin, Indiana, Oklahoma, Utah and Virginia.

Suddenly, marriage equality was the law of the land!

Well, no, not quite.

The court's non-ruling came about because after it had found the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional (U.S. v. Windsor, 2013), all lower courts had consistently ruled in favor of marriage equality. Then, the contrarian Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the same-sex-marriage bans in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee.

Q Syndicate✒Jan 22, 2015

And the issue came right back to the highest court in the nation. The Supremes now have a chance to decide this issue once and for all!

Again, no, not quite.

If they rule to uphold the Sixth Circuit decision, it could throw the marriages of those of us who got married in Wisconsin, Indiana, Oklahoma, Utah and Virginia into legal limbo. At the very least, marriages from any of the 36 states where they are now legal would be nullified any time we'd move to or even travel through marriage discrimination states.

And if they overturn the Sixth Circuit decision, several Republican state legislatures have proposed or passed "religious liberty" laws creating a "right" for employers, insurers, municipal clerks, hospital employees and whoever else feels like it to treat married couples as unrelated strangers.

Texas is even considering a law, House Bill 623, that says, "State or local taxpayer funds or governmental salaries may not be used for an activity that includes the licensing or support of same-sex marriage" -- meaning that even a gay-friendly clerk who issues a marriage license to a same-sex couple is in danger of losing her job.

So sit back and wait to see how this issue eventually turns out. The Supremes have plenty of time to learn how to play the piano, carve ice, and recite French poetry.

Q Toon: Eviction Notice

The Michigan statehouse is cranking out what they call a Religious Freedom Protection Act, so that Jews can't be fired for refusing to work on the Sabbath. To protect Muslim butchers from being forced to offer pork roast to their customers. To guarantee Sikhs the right to wear turbans in their driver's license photos.

No, no, of course that's not the reason. It has nothing to do with the rights of religious minorities. Now that a tide of marriage equality is sweeping the land, something must be done to ensure fundamentalist Christians' right to discriminate against couples they don't like.

Q Syndicate✒Dec 18, 2014

The other day, I read a blog post about "Writing People of Color (if you happen to be a person of another color)" by MariNaomi. The essay included an observation by Keith Knight that "Silly 'ethnic' names and stereotypical dialect should be avoided."

Well, shoot. There go my plans to name a character of color "LiBrarian Bookman."

I often have to give names to the generic people who speak in my cartoons -- at least in the pitch that I send to my editors, even if those names don't appear in the final product. (My editors and I are the only ones who know which is Abby and which is Zoe this week.) I have a page of my sketchbook dedicated to jotting down wordplay names as they occur to me, perhaps to be used later. A few betray an ethnic background, such as "Juan Thieu III."

I grew up in a generation who could expect to have three classmates named "Steve," four named "Mike," and a bunch of "Sues" and "Anns." At least one other classmate was guaranteed to have the same name as you. For variety, "John" might be spelled without the "h," or "Erica" with a "k" instead of the "c."

Many of my fellow baby boomers decided that their own children should have unique names, although the result was a flash flood one year or another of "Ryans" "Ashleys," and "Madisons." (If I give a character one of these names, my editors can tell exactly how old he/she is.) In a desperate attempt to forge uniqueness, many parents resorted to deliberately misspelling their children's names: "Riyann," "Aschleeigh," "Madicine."

I don't know whether African-Americans started this trend or were merely swept up in it along with everybody else, but I would argue that you'll find some of the most inventive names among African-American Gen-Xers, Gen-Yers and Millennials. Some parents found wonderful names by researching their heritage. Others just made baby names up out of random syllables.

This has resulted in a lot of confusion for the people who have had to deal with these babies as they grew older. I know of a teacher scolded by a student's mother for mispronouncing the name, which included a hyphen, of her daughter: "The dash don't be silent!" (Apologies to Mr. Knight for using stereotypical dialect, but that is a direct quotation.)

If parents of any color today are looking to saddle their children with unusual, even bizarre names, I can suggest leafing through Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here, with fellows named "Doremus," "Shad," and "Berzillius." The quack doctor in my cartoon last week, in fact, was named after an incidental character in the book.

All this is a roundabout way of cluing you in, dear reader, that there is an extremely obscure Merry Christmas reference in this week's cartoon somewhere.

Q Toon: What's Good for the Michigoose

Q Syndicate✒Nov 20, 2014

Just before I left for vacation, the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals went against a wave of appellate court rulings by deciding that it is constitutional for Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee to deny marriage rights to same-sex couples. The two Republican appointees found in DeBoer v. Snyder that

By creating a status (marriage) and by subsidizing it (e.g., with tax-filing privileges and deductions), the States created an incentive for two people who procreate together to stay together for purposes of rearing offspring. That does not convict the States of irrationality, only of awareness of the biological reality that couples of the same sex do
not have children in the same way as couples of opposite sexes and that couples of the same sex do not run the risk of unintended offspring. 

This, after earlier noting that in the case of the Michigan couple named as plaintiffs, April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse,

Marriage was not their first objective. DeBoer and Rowse each had adopted children as single parents, and both wanted to serve as adoptive parents for the other partner’s children. Their initial complaint alleged that Michigan’s adoption laws violated
the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The State moved to dismiss the lawsuit for lack of standing, and the district court tentatively agreed. Rather than dismissing the action, the court “invit[ed the] plaintiffs to seek leave to amend their complaint to . . . challenge” Michigan’s laws denying them a marriage license.

So I guess marriage discrimination is intended to promote tax breaks for opposite-sex couples having "unintended offspring." Which puts Republican opposition to "Planned Parenthood" in a whole new light.

Q Toon: To Have and to Hold...

I realize that promising to "obey" is out of fashion; most couples replace "obey" with "cherish" these days. But I wanted Hector and Kevin to use the most traditional version of the marriage vows just to point out what isn't there.

This week's cartoon addresses the allegation that the reason marriage is for different-sex couples only is because they can have children and same-sex couples can't.

Aaron Lindstrom, defending Michigan's opposite-sex supremacy laws: “The state has an interest in marriage because marriage is linked to children,” and to how they’re cared for and whether they’re raised by both a mother and a father.

Judge Paul Kelly's dissent in the Colorado case: "It is biologically undeniable that opposite-gender marriage has a procreative potential that same-gender marriage lacks. [Furthermore,] the state could rationally and sincerely believe that children are best raised by two parents of opposite gender."

Virginia's Catholic Bishops response to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court decision: "Indeed, by its very nature this institution is ordered toward the regeneration and survival of the human race. For that reason Virginia's constitution rightly recognizes the unique contributions marriage -- the union of one man and one woman -- makes to children and to the common good."

Ignored by Lindstrom, Kelly and the bishops are not only the fact that marriage has long been open to couples who are infertile, aged, or having no intention to procreate; but also the fact that same-sex couples can also be parents. Some come to their partners with children due to previous relationships, and there is indeed nothing about same-sex orientation that ipso facto negates the parenting drive.

Besides, it's too late now for traditionalists to go back and change the marriage vows to read: "...to have and to hold babies."